This, is my final mission...

This will be my last post on this blog. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I'll be on a bus for the first leg of my journey home. I've swept out my tent, packed up my bags, picked up my patches and I'm ready to come on home. Tonight I'm headed to the closing campfire and I'll see if I can keep myself together during the last time I'll be singing the Philmont Hymn. I'm going to get up tomorrow at 4 am so that I can watch the sunrise one more time over by the Welcome Center.
I guess this would be a time to reflect on the past summer and see how things went. I had some really awesome crews and only one bad one (it'll be funny if any crews I took out reads this, and they'll wonder if they were that bad crew. Chances are, if you can find me on facebook, you weren't.) But as the last days were winding by, I felt myself confused in my own self-reflection. I was always trying to think how I was affected by Philmont and even at the very top of the Tooth of Time, I found myself unable to do so. I kept wondering what the problem was. The more I tried thinking about it, the more frustrated I became. This is one of the best places in the world, why was I having this issue. I thought about the trees, the rocks, the mountains, the valleys, the views, the weather, everything about Philmont, but it had little meaning to me. Why? Because I was thinking about the wrong thing.
Philmont without the workers or the participants, is just a pile of rocks that kind of looks cool. It's the people you meet and the crews that you bond with out in the wilderness that truly brings this land alive. Without their spirit and without their "thuz" (short for en-thus-iasm) this place doesn't amount to much. All of the crews that I had out here had a great time on the trail, but there is one crew that has stuck out in my mind for facing the most hardship out at Philmont.
Crew 6-23- November, had a seriously rough trip from what they told me. It didn't start out easy either. One mile into their trek, they lost an advisor. She had two sons who were out there with her, so this is already a devastating blow. This set this crew back quite a bit, but they hiked on and held their heads up high. After a rough hike up to Urraca, they still had smiles on their faces as they did the program and went to the evening show. I knew they were having trouble adapting, and they knew that they were having trouble adapting, and as I left them, I was hoping that they would have better luck with their next hike.
The next time I saw this crew, I was at a work day at Beubien. I had to be picking thistle, but they happened to be at the camp when I was driven up in a truck. I didn't have much time to talk, but it was then when I found out they lost another advisor hours after I left them at Urracca. But still, they had a positive attitude and were still ready to go on. I could hear their last advisor shout as I was heading towards my duty for the day, "Hey Pat! I'm the sole survivor!!"
I didn't see them for the rest of their trek until I got back into Base Camp and boy, did they have some stories to tell. They lost their crew leader the last night of their trek, they were woken up in the middle of the night with boy from another crew screaming, "BEAR! BEAR! OH GOD! WHY ME?!?!", and all sorts of different catastrophes, but they all had smiles on their faces. They actually changed their names to 6-23-Notorious, for all of the bad luck they were having. On of the boys even decided he was going to do OATC, a special trek we offered. I was perplexed by how they could mange this. From the sounds of it, they had an absolutely miserable time. But with the way this crew worked, they always saw the glass as half full.
This is what Philmont is all about. This is what I reflected on last night. The people who interact with the land and each other really bring this land to life. The land affects us like metal being purified in a crucible or a blacksmith hammering out a nail. "Every Boy Scout Troop needs a forest to get lost, miserable, and starving in." It's through the conflict that we get stronger and become better people, and it's the joy that the land brings to us, with it's beautiful sights and sounds and magnificent wildlife, that makes the trip all worth while, but the land isn't enough. With the people we either bring or meet out here, we share moments of friendship and fellowship and also persevere through the tough times together. Whether it's making up games to play on long hikes, or huddling under the rainfly during a torrential rainstorm while singing Katy Perry or Queen to keep warm, each moment of this common experiences really brings people together.
This is really all the time I have left for this post (and I really wish I had the time to write down how each crew affected me, but I have to keep it short. Long enough to cover the subject but short enough to keep it interesting). Thanks to everyone for making this summer as awesome as it was. I'll be finding my way back home on a 18 hour journey. I'll see you all very soon.

Enjoy,

Pat

Ranger Marathon. Everything hurts

The Ranger Marathon is walking from the most northern camp, Dan Beard, to the most southern camp on Philmont property, Carson Meadows, in 24 hours. It's a 40 to 46 mile trek depending on the route you take. Our route was about 42-43 miles long. I was going with two other guys, Kieran Meyer and Mark Kelley. We started by getting to Dan Beard the day before and relaxing up there. The staff there was really cool. They fed us and showed us to a really cool place north of the camp. While we were up there, we saw fresh bear and mountain lion tracks and we were as close to the Valle as we could be without getting arrested. We then slept on the roof of the cabin and waited until the next day.
At 4 am I wake up to the alarm on my watch. It's freezing at this point. I wake Kieren up, who's on the roof with me. We climb down to see Mark, who was sleeping on the porch, already awake and packing up his gear. We fill up on water and leave a note for the guys at Dan Beard thanking them for their hospitality. At about 4:45 we leave the porch and I start my timer. It's still dark, and we're in the heart of mountain lion territory, so that was a bit nerve racking, but even worse, I immediatley start feeling a hot spot. For those of you who don't know, a hot spot is a sign that a blister is forming. I wait until we get to Ponil, which is a six mile hike, to put mole skin on it. After I do, my feet feel a bit safer, but I knew that it wasn't going to last the whole trip.
After about 5 hours, we make it to the Cimarron River, which means we were officially leaving the North Country. We take our first break underneath a bridge. A crew asks if we were going to Devil's Wash Basin, which is where they were going. "Uhh... A little further than that," We say. After another 3 hours of hiking, we end up at Ute Gultch Commisary, which was roughly our halfway point at 22 miles. We take a good 45 minute break there while eating lunch and filling up on water. After that we keep moving, know that soon we were going over the hardest point on our trek, Shaefer's Pass.
This was the roughest point, especially for me. I felt like I just hit a wll, which is kind of expected after hiking 30 miles then climbing a mountain. Without the moral support of the other Rangers, I probably would have given up right there. We make it to the top and we all know that the hardest part is over. We had 12 miles left to do and we weren't going to give up after we had gone so far. We zipped up our mansuits and proceeded to hike the rest of the way up. When it started getting dark, all conversation was replaced with the occasional, "Ow" "Ouch" "Dammit". Our feet were absolutly dying at this point.
We make it to Abreu, which is the last camp before Carson Meadows and hang out on their porch with the staff for a bit. It's about 10:00 pm at this point. I'm sitting on the porch swing and suddenly I feel like I'm getting a sort of lack of motion sickness. Sitting still after walkng for so longhas made me a bit sick. I get a trash bag from the staff at the camp and with no time to spare. I throw up what ever contents I had in my stomach into this trash bag. There wasn't much seeing that we didn't really have much time to eat. After that, I first apologized to Abreu, then felt a whole lot better. I began to think why I felt so sick in such a short period of time. Then I remembered, "Oh right. I just hiked 40 miles in 17 hours."
We headed towards Carson Meadows and got there much faster than we thought we would. We stopped at the bottom of the steps on the porch and I pulled up my timer. We climbed up and the moment our feet hit the porch, I stopped the watch. 18 hours, 29 minutes and 23 seconds. We had made it. There were a few staff members who were still awake. It was about 11 pm at this point. We ask them if we could crash on their porch and they let us. We set up our sleeping gear and as we take off our boots, we realize how much pain our feet our in. I could feel the pulse in my feet as they would n stop throbbing all night long and into the morning. However, for every ounce of pain we felt and for how exhausted we were, in the end it was all worth it. We hiked the distance from my house to DC in one day. It was the most challenging thing I've probably ever encoutered and we did it.
I'll try to get another post on here before I leave for back home. I got three more weeks until I can see you all again. Until then, see you all later.

I love my job.

There are very few times in life where you can get the feeling that I have right now. Today, I was scheduled to be an alternate ranger, which meand that if somebody could not take their crew out, I would have to fill in. Unfortunately, not enough rangers were unavailable to take out a crew, so I spent my day in the SAC (Staff Activities Center). I was writing a couple postcards to friends back home when someone came in looking for me. I had a job to do.
A man needed to be escorted to the top of the Tooth of Time ridge. I was the only available alternate so I took the job gladly. This adult leader was coming in on the last day of his trek. He was supposed to go to Philmont with his son, and they had been planning for a year and a half to go together, but on the day they were supposed to leave, he had to have an emergency surgery and could not go. He had his bag packed already, but he had to drop off his son at the airport while he went home. His son had no hope that he would go to Philmont with his father.
Until, on the 11th day of his expedition, the man showed up at Philmont and walked into logistics, trying to find a way to join his son for his last day of hiking. Logistics thought the chances were slim that he would get out there and apologized, and said that they wouldn't be able to get them to Tooth Ridge Camp. However, as this man was leaving, someone else in Logistics told him to go to the Ranger Office, thinking that someone there could help. Sure enough, that person happened to be me. So we left the R.O. at around 4pm, and we started hiking up to the top of Tooth Ridge. We got there about an hour and a half later and I told the man to stay a few paces behind me. I went up to each crew and said, "Hi there! What expedition number are you?" looking for the man's crew. Finally, at 6:45 and with the last crew I saw, I approached them and said, "Hey, are you 61*-*?" (censored for privacy reasons). They all nodded. I then said, "I've got something for you," motioning behind me. He came from behind a tree and the camp all gasped, and I could see his son's face light up. Seeing that just made my day. After all of the extra flights, the bus trip, and finally a hike up to the base of hte Tooth at 6 o'clock at night, had finally reunited this man and his boy.
It's days like this that make me glad to work here. One of the mottos of the Ranger Department is "Change lives" and that is exactly how I felt today. It's been a month and a day since I've left home, and I have about a month and a half left. My home crew arrives in just a few days and I'm pretty excited for them. Unfortunately, I'll have to wrap this up. I'm about to reach my time limit on the computer. I'll see you guys later.
Pat.

Right, yeah there is EXTREME FIRE DANGER EVERYWHERE here in Philmont. I'll be careful with my stoves and such. Closest fire is 45 miles away from here, making me a bit nervous. Let's hope for the best shall we.

It's been a while

I've been pretty busy down here in NM, and the internet hasn't been working too well, so here is a new post that will cover the past two weeks or so.
Headed out on my training trek and got trained and whatnot. Got back 6-06, visited a town called Taos, (pronounced like Towson without the last two letters) and spent a little bit too much money. Then a few days later, I got my first crew.
This crew was from Denver so they were already aclimated to the altitude, rather than the sister crew who was from Florida. They lived real close to where Maggie and Greg are, so when I mentioned a few places, like the Red Rocks ampitheater, they knew what I was talking about. It was a really awesome crew to have to start off with. THey were very similiar in the way they acted to my crew last year, so I know they're going to have a good and successful trek.
One of the ways I know they're goona be great is the fact that dinner was screwed up two days in a row, and they were able to laugh at what happened. They kept a positive attitude, listened to what I had to teach them, and promptly acted when, on the second night, they lost their dinner on the ground of their campsite. I had them sign my bear bag (which I think I make all my crews do) and then I went on my hike-in day with another ranger who was going the same direction. We were trying to catch the early bus back to base so we booked it, going about 7 miles in an hour and a half. However, we missed the bus by ten minutes and had to wait for the next bus three hours later.
I was supposed to pick up a crew yesterday because I got sick with some kind of virus. I didn't want to get any crews sick the moment they went out onto the trail, so it's work days for me until 6-19, when I pick up my next crew. Oh well.
Still no bears, still no mountain lions, but I need to go because we only have half an hour allowed on the computer and my time is running out. Will update again soon the moment I can.

See you all later,

Pat

I'm here!

Hello friends and family. How have you all been? I've made it down to Philmont and things are already starting to pick up. I go with my ranger training crew for a five day trek staring tomorrow. Should be tough but still a whole lot if fun.
So much has already happened and I've only been gone since Friday. I had a great time hanging out with Maggie, Greg and Leean in Denver. They showed some pretty cool places like Yardhouse ( a restaurant), Golden (a town) and all of the fantastic scenery nearby, like Red Rocks ampitheater.
Not too much has happened at Philmont. Just some training and forced socializing. The crews start coming in on the 8th of June, and I'll start taking crews out soon after that. After my trek this week, I'll post again about what's going down.

See you all later,
Pat.

This is the new blog set up for friends and family. I'll be writing about the cool stories and stuff. I head out tomorrow afternoon. Need to get one last J.J.'s breakfast sandwich and pack the rest of my stuff up. After that, I am good to go.